The purpose of the paper is to investigate how different religious groups such as Muslims and Christians are presented in the digital magazine Samtiden. Furthermore, the purpose is to investigate whether and how different religions differ in their presentation and whether there is a clear agenda related to emerging beliefs.  The actual selection I chose to start from is the year 2018 where articles in relation to my keywords and delimitations have been shown. They have then been analyzed through a qualitative text analysis with the ambition to be able to answer my questions and the purpose of investigating how different religious groups such as Muslims and Christians are portrayed in the digital magazine Samtiden. By starting from my theoretical starting points about postcolonial theory, anti-emigration, post-secular theory and gender perspective, I, along with methodological approaches, have got tools to be able to analyze the material in a successful way.  My results show how the representation of religions is manifested and what distinguishes them from where it appears that stereotypical categorizations such as Muslims are cruel, violent and perceived as a threat while Christians appear to be victims of Muslim aggression. The Christian and "Swedish" appear to be intertwined and constitute "we" while Muslims are portrayed as "them".

Islamofobi är ett växande problem i Europa som negativt påverkar muslimers förutsättningar och möjligheter i samhället. Samtidigt är religionsfriheten en mänsklig rättighet och en av grundvalarna för ett demokratiskt och pluralistiskt samhälle. Denna uppsats undersöker hur islamofobi påverkar religionsfrihetens implementering i Sverige. Resultatet visar att muslimers rätt att utöva sin religion hotas av islamofobiska praktiker, så som attacker mot moskéer, motstånd mot muslimska organisationer och förbud av slöjan. Studien utforskar även statens förpliktelser och ansvar för att motverka islamofobi och främja muslimers rättigheter och lika möjligheter – för att på så sätt kunna uppnå ett verkligt demokratiskt och pluralistiskt samhälle där utsatta grupper beskyddas. / Islamophobia is an increasing problem in Europe which has a negative effect on Muslims’ conditions and opportunities within the society. At the same time, freedom of religion is a human right and one of the foundations in a democratic and pluralistic society. This thesis examines how islamophobia affects the implementation of freedom of religion in Sweden. The result shows that Muslims’ right to practice their religion is substantially threatened by islamophobic practices, such as attacks against mosques, resistance towards Muslim organizations and banning of the veil. The study also explores the state’s obligations and responsibility to counteract islamophobia and promote Muslims’ rights and equal opportunities – and thus be able to achieve a truly democratic and pluralistic society where vulnerable groups are protected.

Islamofobi är ett växande problem i Europa som negativt påverkar muslimers förutsättningar och möjligheter i samhället. Samtidigt är religionsfriheten en mänsklig rättighet och en av grundvalarna för ett demokratiskt och pluralistiskt samhälle. Denna uppsats undersöker hur islamofobi påverkar religionsfrihetens implementering i Sverige. Resultatet visar att muslimers rätt att utöva sin religion hotas av islamofobiska praktiker, så som attacker mot moskéer, motstånd mot muslimska organisationer och förbud av slöjan. Studien utforskar även statens förpliktelser och ansvar för att motverka islamofobi och främja muslimers rättigheter och lika möjligheter – för att på så sätt kunna uppnå ett verkligt demokratiskt och pluralistiskt samhälle där utsatta grupper beskyddas. / Islamophobia is an increasing problem in Europe which has a negative effect on Muslims’ conditions and opportunities within the society. At the same time, freedom of religion is a human right and one of the foundations in a democratic and pluralistic society. This thesis examines how islamophobia affects the implementation of freedom of religion in Sweden. The result shows that Muslims’ right to practice their religion is substantially threatened by islamophobic practices, such as attacks against mosques, resistance towards Muslim organizations and banning of the veil. The study also explores the state’s obligations and responsibility to counteract islamophobia and promote Muslims’ rights and equal opportunities – and thus be able to achieve a truly democratic and pluralistic society where vulnerable groups are protected.

Muslims and islam are unquestionably a part of European social life. In recent times, however, different events, such as the enlargement of the EU and the fact that muslims to a higher extent demand their rights, have brought a number of questions to the fore concerning muslims and islam in Europe. Moreover, we can see an increasing level of islamophobia in contemporary Europe, but also that the EU has launched several programs to increase both the diversity and the unity throughout the Union and to combat islamophobia. However, most of these programs focus on islam as religion and muslims in general, and such a narrow viewpoint runs the risk of missing important issues. In this new context it would be interesting to widen the scope and ask what place not only the muslim community and islam, but also sharia (an important element in islam), may have in future Europe – especially when it comes to muslim identity? My main objects are to see how the concept of sharia is constructed in the debates in the European Parliament, how that discourse relates to a social practice – the increasing islamophobic ideas in Europe – and what effect this may have on muslim identity in a European context. The results shows that the Parliament constructs sharia as, for example, something archaic, threatening, inhuman and misogynistic. In that sense, the discourse fits in with the predominant order of discourse regarding islam and muslims (in Europe) – and strengthen it. Though my results are neither absolute nor uniform, they show, persuasively enough, that sharia (as it is seen by the Parliament) is not consistent with and can not be included in or accepted by “European norms and values”. However, this must be said with one reservation: sharia is not always excluded as a whole. Still, it is not difficult to maintain that it is sharia as such that activates the (negative and) excluding connotations. Thus, an “approved” European muslim identity, as it seems, can not have too close connections with sharia, if (any) at all. Moreover, there is a risk that muslims themselves take on a restricting practice concerning their identity. In all, this will to a large extent circumscribe the possible muslim identities in Europe. To form a substantial and really pluralistic diversity in Europe, the EU, and others, must liberate itself from the logic of these discourses. But this is not an easy thing to do. One way that might be profitable, is to challenge the prevailing discourse with new narratives – narratives and voices that for the most part must come from the muslims themselves. Despite the fact that these voices do exist, as has been shown, the question is how and under what circumstances they can be seen – or rather heard. Unfortunately the answer is not to be found in this thesis; the need of further research is obvious.

Måste det nödvändigtvis vara invecklat och svårt med interkulturella relationer? Innebär kärleksrelationer över gränserna mer komplikationer än andra förhållanden där man delar kultur, religion och etnicitet? Det finns uppenbarligen många människor som fattar tycker för varandra oavsett nationalitet och tro, men i flera skönlitterära romaner skildras en bild av att det är mer eller mindre omöjligt att få ett sådant förhållande att fungera. Jag vill dock gärna fortsätta att tro att kärleken beror mer på en sorts personkemi och attraktion människor emellan, något som man inte direkt kan sätta fingret på men som ändå finns där. I min uppsats skildrar och analyserar jag två populära och spridda romaner för att ta reda på vilken bild som framställs när det gäller kärleken mellan en mörkhyad muslimsk man och en vit kristen kvinna. I diskussionen redogör jag för mina egna tankar och åsikter om romanerna, samt beskriver hur jag tror de påverkar människor som tar del av dem genom bok eller film. Resultatet av romananalyserna visar att de båda redogör för en väldigt negativ och mörk bild vad det gäller de kärlekspar som det handlar om, och det är framförallt männen i historierna som presenteras på ett negativt sätt, och som kan bekräfta islamofoba och invandrarfientliga uppfattningar som finns i samhället. / Does it always have to be complicated with intercultural relations? Is it so difficult with love when it comes to people with different religions, backgrounds and cultures? True, many persons fall in love whatever the nationality or faith happen to be, but is it like the popular books and movies describes – more or less impossible to fulfill a intercultural relationship? I don’t think so, and I will still keep on believing that love is something that depends on other things like the chemistry of human beings, and the strong feelings between two people, that make them cross the borders and just feel the love. In my essay I will analyze and describe how two popular and worldwide spread novels describes and presents the love between a dark-skinned Muslim man and a white Christian women, and I will also discuss what I think these two will represent, and what kind of signals they give to the people who read about them and see them on film. The result of the investigation turns out to be that these two novels describe a very negative and dark picture of the two couples that the novels are about. And it is particularly the two men in the stories who is presented in a negative way, and which also can confirm islamophobic and anti-immigrant views.

In the years between 2012 and 2014, Burma has been shaken by waves of violence against Muslims which has resulted in destroyed mosques and shops, at least 140 000 displaced and 200 killed persons. The person who is said to lay behind this violence is the Burmese Theravada monk Ashin Wirathu. Being the founder and leader of the radical Buddhist movement 969, he has been accused of indirectly motivating violence against Muslims and has been portrayed with titles such as “The face of buddhist terror”. This essay investigates the relation between Wirathu and the anti-Muslim violence by applying the method of content analysis on a speech of him. Identifying an emphasis on subjects concerning politics, nationalism and anti-Muslim statements, these factors are contextualized to colonial and postcolonial Burma for the purpose of finding causes for the recent struggles. Recognizing the appearing of these factors in the context of Burma, which has undergone a tense 20th century comprising colonization and military dictatorship, offer some explanation of the rhetoric found in the analyzed speech. Using the context of the identified subjects and a theory which explains the rise of religious conflict in postmodern states, this study concludes that the content in Ashin Wirathu’s speech motivate for anti-Muslim violence through the use of political, ethnic nationalistic and islamophobic statements.

Muslims and islam are unquestionably a part of European social life. In recent times, however, different events, such as the enlargement of the EU and the fact that muslims to a higher extent demand their rights, have brought a number of questions to the fore concerning muslims and islam in Europe. Moreover, we can see an increasing level of islamophobia in contemporary Europe, but also that the EU has launched several programs to increase both the diversity and the unity throughout the Union and to combat islamophobia. However, most of these programs focus on islam as religion and muslims in general, and such a narrow viewpoint runs the risk of missing important issues. In this new context it would be interesting to widen the scope and ask what place not only the muslim community and islam, but also sharia (an important element in islam), may have in future Europe – especially when it comes to muslim identity? My main objects are to see how the concept of sharia is constructed in the debates in the European Parliament, how that discourse relates to a social practice – the increasing islamophobic ideas in Europe – and what effect this may have on muslim identity in a European context. The results shows that the Parliament constructs sharia as, for example, something archaic, threatening, inhuman and misogynistic. In that sense, the discourse fits in with the predominant order of discourse regarding islam and muslims (in Europe) – and strengthen it. Though my results are neither absolute nor uniform, they show, persuasively enough, that sharia (as it is seen by the Parliament) is not consistent with and can not be included in or accepted by “European norms and values”. However, this must be said with one reservation: sharia is not always excluded as a whole. Still, it is not difficult to maintain that it is sharia as such that activates the (negative and) excluding connotations. Thus, an “approved” European muslim identity, as it seems, can not have too close connections with sharia, if (any) at all. Moreover, there is a risk that muslims themselves take on a restricting practice concerning their identity. In all, this will to a large extent circumscribe the possible muslim identities in Europe. To form a substantial and really pluralistic diversity in Europe, the EU, and others, must liberate itself from the logic of these discourses. But this is not an easy thing to do. One way that might be profitable, is to challenge the prevailing discourse with new narratives – narratives and voices that for the most part must come from the muslims themselves. Despite the fact that these voices do exist, as has been shown, the question is how and under what circumstances they can be seen – or rather heard. Unfortunately the answer is not to be found in this thesis; the need of further research is obvious.

The approach of this study is that conversion to Islam leads to stigmatization. Based on that the aim of this study is to examine what reactions and treatment Swedish Muslim converts have experienced from their families regarding their conversion to Islam, how they prepare for revealing their conversion, what strategies they use to handle their families’ reactions and whether this has any significance in their self-perception. The study is qualitative and was made with semi-structured interviews with five Swedish female converts. The theories used are Erving Goffman’s stigma and the concepts of Islamophobia and Swedishness. The results show that the converts prepare the revealing of their conversion by speaking openly and positively about Islam a long time before the revealing. The reactions received indicate reproduced Islamophobic prejudices and aversions and take form of grief, shame, and despair to more far-reaching reactions such as negative violations, distancing, lack of support and exclusion from the family unity and from Swedishness. The women explain that they hide the fact that they pray, and, in some cases, they take off their headscarves when visiting their families. Furthermore, they wear a turban or put on headscarves and clothes with bright colors to look more ‘normal’. Finally, their self-perception is affected by all the negative reactions and treatment, and they clarify that they feel ambiguities about how to perceive themselves: as ‘real’ Swedes or not since their families tell them they areno longer considered as such

Title: What is a refugee, crisis & disaster? A comparative discourse analyses of SVT:s and Avpixlats reporting about refugees. The war in Syria, refugees and ISIS have been on the news agenda for a while. The perspective have been shifting throw different happenings about refugees, crisis, disaster and terrorism on one side. On the other side is what kind of newsagent that is reporting and there standing in society. Public service like SVT have there place on how to inform the public about different events around the world and then you have smaller news-agents thats growing in readers like Avpixlat who call themselves alternative journalism. They have less rules and regulations to follow in there news reporting and can therefor frame and angle information in a more free way. The purpose in this study is to compare how the image of refugees are created by reports from SVT and Avpixlat and how it relates to xenophobia of different kinds. The method that is used is discourse analysis and more precise Chantal Laclau och Ernesto Mouffes discourse theory. The specifik theories for the framework are ”orientalism", ”whiteness”, ”islamofobia”, ”myths”, earlier studies whit the theory of ”communitarian figures” and statistik misrepresentation of muslims as terrorists in news channels. Two different discourses where found in the material, ”refugee-crises” and refugee-crieses whiteout situation marks. The first one origins från Avpixlat and build on that there are no crises alongside the war in Syria, ISIS and refugees that flee from these factors. Refugees are fake, they are immigrants that come whit economic and potential terrorist purpose to other parts around the globe, with Europe in mind and especially Sweden. Refugees where seen as ”the other” in negativ terms, high rates if islamofobia were found, Sweden represent ”the good moral” and Syria represent the ”worst moral” in terms on symbolic witness. Europe and mostly Sweden portrays as the victim rather than refugees, SVT portrays the other way around and a drowned boy symbols refugee disasters around Mediterranean.

Quran burning is a new phenomenon in Sweden first executed by Rasmus Paludan, the leader of a far-right, anti-immigrant political party - Stram Kurs. These burnings are still a subject of debates and cause a lot of controversy due to the vandalism caused by the local muslim protesters and because many muslims and non-muslims believe that it should be categorized as incitement of hatred against muslims. The purpose of this study is to illuminate how young muslims in Skania, Sweden, perceive the Quran burnings that are protected by the Swedish Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression. The purpose of this study is also to get a picture of how the burnings affect them and to show how this demonstration of freedom of speech affects their freedom of religion. Five semi structured interviews were done to conduct this study. The chosen relevant theories that were used were stigma, islamophobia, the argument from truth and the argument from autonomy. The most important findings of this study are that the interviewed young Swedish muslims believe that there is an error in the Swedish system where laws against incitement of hatred are only applied in some cases, but not other. And that the interviewees feel angry about the police protecting a man who is trying to provoke them by mocking them and their religion. They also question whether they belong in Sweden and are convinced that the Quran burnings will only cause further division in the society of which muslims are a large part of. Another problem that they pointed out is that the media uses the pictures of the vandalizing protesters to spread a negative image of muslims and Islam. Another finding is that the interviewed young Swedish muslims feel that the Quran burnings are a new and legitimate way for islamophobes to attack and offend them. They also feel, however, that their freedom of religion remains unaffected. The last finding is that based on the argument from truth and the argument from autonomy, the Quran burnings do not justify limiting the freedom of expression. The conclusion is that these islamophobic attacks in the form of Quran burnings are a consequence of a tribal stigma that, according to the interviewed young Swedish muslims, muslims in Sweden have to live with. This stigma can even be found in how the interviewed muslims feel the government and the media are treating them. Even if the Quran burnings don’t justify limiting freedom of expression, the problem remains that the interviewees feel that freedom of expression is being used against them. / <p>Mångfaldsstudier</p>